Line-us: The little robot drawing arm

£71,345

1,057

Hello Line-us!

Hi Everyone,

We’ve been completely amazed by the interest in Line-us. A huge thank
you to everyone who has backed us, asked questions, Tweeted, Instagrammed,
Facebooked or just taken the time to look at our page. We set out to raise
funds to produce the first batch and we’ve achieved that goal much faster than
we could have possibly imagined.

Now we want to focus on getting the first 1,000 Line-us machines
produced. This might seem odd given how much interest there is. We will be
making more machines after the first batch has been produced, shipped, and
we see how people use them.

We’re really sorry if you didn’t manage to get a machine, but please
sign up to our mailing list at www.line-us.com so we can keep you
up-to-date when more will be available.

However…
we do have another reward or two up our sleeve; not a machine but other things
that are pretty good. We’ll be adding the first of those in the next few
days, so please stay tuned. If you are on our mailing list you will hear before
they go live on Kickstarter and if you’re not, sign up now at www.line-us.com

Line-us is a small internet connected robot drawing arm – it mimics your motion with a pen and recreates whatever you draw on screen. Draw with your finger, mouse, stylus or Apple Pencil and follow it in real time as it copies your movements. Save and share your drawing to start communicating with other Line-us machines!

Line-us: The little robot arm

It's not a plotter nor a printer, it's a draw-er, which gives Line-us its own style and unique character. The magic bit is that Line-us draws in exactly the same order you did.

Just connect it to a USB battery or power supply and you are ready to go. Line-us comes with a small metal plate to hold it in place. You can use it on any writable surface: in your sketchbook, diary, notebook or just a piece of paper. You can also hang it to the wall or mount it on a fridge

A community of users

What can I do with Line-us? We can only guess – it's up to you! We believe Line-us becomes magical when it connects to the internet and talks to the community of other machines. We want to find out what you will do with it:

Enjoy collecting other people's drawings.

Use it to send messages...

and receive them.

Play games with friends

Be inventive and experiment!

If you're in to coding, Line-us has an easy interface to talk to Scratch, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Python and Processing. It can talk to another language too.

Line-us the app

The app is how you interact with your own Line-us and see what people have shared with you. It lets you create, save and share drawings; then draw them again and again and again…

Line-us works on iPads, iPhones and Android. It also works
on Mac and PC. You can draw or write with your finger, a stylus, Wacom
tablets or the Apple Pencil. It's all up to you.

We have designed the app with features that make it fun for anyone to draw, share and follow other people's creations. Here are some of them:

This is your canvas. Draw anything you want!

Access your device's camera and trace over a photo.

Erase some of the drawing by going back in time

The app is organised in to four areas:Draw - Sketchbook - Share - Published

REWARDS!

We need your support to make the first 1000 Line-us machines. In return you will get great rewards and be part of the first community of users.

The pilot project – for the first 1000 backers

Calling for illustrators, doodlers, artists, hackers and makers!

We have been working hard for the last eight months developing Line-us and we’ve had a lot of fun playing with it. We feel like Line-us is a living prototype, which is why we need to develop it further. Having many years of experience in industrial design, tech products and software development we know that feedback is crucial for any product to be truly amazing and fully functioning. This is also the case for Line-us. We have done a lot of work already but want an inspiring community of illustrators, doodlers, hackers and makers to make Line-us even better. And this is where you come in!

We are raising funds to produce the first batch of 1000 Line-us machines and testing it with you in order to make it truly fantastic. The money we will raise through Kickstarter will be used to:

Make injection moulding tools so that we can manufacture Line-us

Produce the custom Printed Circuit Board that is its brain

Develop the server software that will make sharing your doodles easy

Buy the servo motors, nuts, bolts, magnets, bearings, springs and other bits and bobs we need to make 1,000 machines

Make the carrying box and metal plates that will allow you to take Line-us with you when you’re on the move

We have been working intensively to develop Line-us over the last 8 months and are ready to move to manufacture.

This is the work so far and the plan for the production of Line-us, from now until it gets into your hands:

You will need: Power source (see above), USB cable, pen, paper and imagination!

About Us

Durrell has worked for over 25 years on physical products, inventions, installations,
software and games. He has worked with IDEO, Apple, Interval Research, Berg, amongst
others. He has had several companies, notably Itch and Luckybite. Durrell has been
teaching product and interaction design at the Royal College of Art for over 20 years
and has lectured in many colleges in the UK, Europe and USA. He has worked with clients
such as the Science Museum, Google, Microsoft, O2, and Nokia. Durrell Bishop has been a
pioneer in internet connected products since the early 1990s.

Rob has worked as a technologist for over 20 years and a photographer for 10. During
that time, he developed AI software to design car parts, worked with supercomputers,
used CGI to find defects in car bodies, built a data-centre and ran a futures trading
system. He photographed shoes, bags, jewellery, models, bottles, ties and made a
machine to automatically create photographs. Rob’s work has been exhibited in London,
Los Angeles and Auckland.

Risks and challenges

We feel well equipped to produce Line-us on time. Between both of us we have lots of experience in developing quality products some of which have been sold through high street retailers.
We are a team of two working on this project, but we have several other friends who have joined us to give a hand. This has enabled us to source manufacturers and get realistic quotes. As for any project and especially Kickstarter funded project, there is always a risk of delays or unexpected problems. We have enough experience between the two of us to have taken into account unforeseen problems.
Line-us is WiFi connected and we have tested it extensively, however we can not guarantee it will work with all WiFi networks. Sharing relies on our server but if these were ever to become unavailable, drawing and local saving is independent of them.
We will keep you up to date every month about the development of the project.